Primarily happy political news

Foreign Policy has an article up about Guido Westerwelle, Germany's vice-chancellor, foreign minister, and openly gay man -- and how the mainstream conservative press and his political opponents have not attacked him based on his orientation or "family values" or whatnot, but merely on his political views (which, of course, are fair game to attack any politician on, as they're an integral part of the job). It also analyzes the political history of modern Germany, and speculates on why it might be that Germans don't care about sexual orientation of candidates; leading contenders include a larger pool of atheists, a large pool of very socially liberal Protestants, a Catholic church that is less likely to bow to Rome than the American version is, and voters being happy that the candidate is out of the closet and thus "authentic".

While it would be easy to gloss over the problems still to be overcome, the article also does address the continuing regional divisions and the fairly common urban-rural split on such issues. It also includes information about other politicians who have been attacked for their orientations, and how they've dealt with it. It's not utopia, but oddly enough that makes it easier for me to appreciate the good news in it, because it seems more real when not coming in the midst of a rose-colored-glasses view of the world.

Still, amidst all of the political negatives wrapped up with homosexuality, it's worth the time to acknowledge that there are places where the average person doesn't really care about sexual orientation of someone they're not trying to date. That's really the dream for guys like me: not people liking me being gay (except guys I'm trying to date), but people just not caring one way or the other. Not everywhere is there yet, of course, and I fully support agitating and organizing to get us there faster -- there are plenty of situations where a dream deferred is a dream denied -- but time/history is on our side arguments are a lot more meaningful when we can point to a major politician in a powerful country where even his opponents don't think his being gay is an issue only 11 years after the rule of a party that promised a return to traditional morality.

I like how a good portion of the article was explaining that the CDU wasn't anything like the political wing of the Catholic church in the states: critical of Rome, socially liberal/fiscally conservative, not knuckle dragging bigots.

I mean, this is a descendant party of the one that fought Bismark, Hitler, and Pope Pius XII.